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Premature Desperation

By Charles M. Blow October 10, 2012 9:51 pmOctober 10, 2012 9:51 pm

Hey you! Come down off that ledge. Let’s talk this through. It’s not as bad as it seems.

Yes, the president’s performance in the last debate was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. Yes, Mitt Romney plowed over the truth like road kill and drove away free as a bird. Yes, the narrow swath of voters in the middle — many of whom may be low-information, low-engagement voters — responded to Romney’s forcefulness and were put off by the president’s passivity. Yes, Romney got a post-debate bump.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. It isn’t.

Romney’s post-debate bounce essentially wiped out Obama’s post-convention bounce so we’re pretty much back to where we started: a tight race in which the president holds a narrow lead (when all polls are taken together), but also one in which he is still highly favored to win the electoral college.

Those numbers could change, but they haven’t yet.

I can understand a certain amount of unease in the Obama-supporting public in general, but within the left-leaning press it’s inexcusable. Only the laziest political commentators could look at the current state of play and see doom for Obama. In fact, the panic among professional liberal pundits is a bit like screaming fire in a theater showing a Michael Moore documentary. Cut it out and grow up!

While the profession is still obsessing about the last debate and Obama’s stumbles, Mitt Romney is strutting around with his bad math pitching himself as a born-again moderate. He is selling vast tax cuts on the vaguest of specifics. It’s like one of those childhood lullabies that sounds good until you realize what it’s actually saying: that the bough breaks and the baby falls.

Also as part of the new “moderate Mitt” offensive, Romney told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday that

There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.

What kind of wishy-washy, sidewinder statement is that? Do you even know what a simple, declarative statement is Mr. Romney? Did no one teach you that at your fancy boarding school?

Not only is the statement squishy, but, based on Romney’s previously stated positions, it’s a lie. As Planned Parenthood Action Fund pointed out:

Romney changes positions the way a pop diva changes outfits. There is no way to know what he actually believes. That is not the mark of an honest man. That should be the focus of all of our attention and consternation. Obama’s debate performance was disappointing, but Romney’s allergy to the truth could prove disastrous.

The best cure for a bad debate performance is another debate, and the vice-presidential debate is Thursday night. So let’s get ahold of ourselves. Hysteria is uncalled for and unseemly.

Paul Ryan can come across as having bought into his own hype as a higher order thinker. The beltway-anointed “policy wonk” and “numbers whiz” often tries to avoid answering questions by saying that the answers are too complicated. I call that an incredibly condescending cop out: “Don’t worry your pretty little heads with these big ugly numbers. Just trust me.”

Ryan has convictions — those that the Romney campaign would let him keep — but he hardly strikes me as a genius. Furthermore, he can be quite an awkward speaker, trying a bit too hard to appear earnest.

Vice President Biden, on the other hand, has demonstrated that he’s a strong debater. Although can be a bit of a loose cannon, he is also very good at summarizing complicated concepts in simple ways. And he has passion aplenty.

I’m not predicting winners and losers for Thursday’s debate (the first presidential debate should have demonstrated the hazards of that), but I am saying that the vice president has the advantage. Whether he will leverage it is another question.

My only real prediction is that there will be more twists between now and Election Day. Anyone wanting reassurance will be left wanting. The race will remain fluid. The candidate who has a good day is not guaranteed a good tomorrow. Overconfidence is a curse. Momentum can turn on a dime.

This means that voters and pundits must take the long view and not a short one. Winning an individual battle is good, but winning the war is the goal. Resist the urge to panic when you’re down and to celebrate when you are up.

And for goodness sake, get off the ledge.

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Weekly pieces by the Op-Ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat, as well as regular posts from contributing writers like Thomas B. Edsall and Timothy Egan. This is also the place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election. Yes, everything: the candidates, the states, the caucuses, the issues, the rules, the controversies, the primaries, the ads, the electorate, the present, the past and even the future.